


Survivor's Guilt

by JennTheMastermind



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bellarke, F/M, Heavy Angst, Post-Season 4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-13 23:46:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11195991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennTheMastermind/pseuds/JennTheMastermind
Summary: Survivor's guilt weighs on both Clarke and Bellamy, but then he hears her through the one-way radio.





	Survivor's Guilt

**Author's Note:**

> a.k.a. The awful angst that no one asked for but I wrote anyway. Have fun with the tears!

“Bellamy, I hope you made it.”

Clarke let the radio go silent after she spoke what she’d only thought for so long. She’d made herself choke them out, because the truth was survivor’s guilt would kill her before earth got the chance. The newly irradiated planet had new lethal tricks hidden within the seemingly green paradise she’d found, even if the radiation had been dissipating for three years. Still, Clarke thought those were easy. Easier, anyway, than the new lethal tricks her own conscious had hidden in her.

“Bellamy, I hope you _all_ made it.”

The bunker was quiet. The Ring was quiet. Clarke lived in a world of silence, and the hardest part was that she _lived_.

 _"I need you all to have made it._ ”

She whispered the last into the radio, certain no one was there to hear her no matter the volume of her voice. Tears strangled her throat, and Clarke threw the radio over the cliff—throwing it so hard she stumbled and fell—throwing it like she had the tablet on the satellite tower when the deathwave hit. She hadn’t gotten the power uploaded to the Ring. She hadn’t gotten her friends the power they’d needed to live. She’d killed them, and lived.

Survivor’s guilt.

Clarke never really understood how bad it could feel to be the last one standing, if she could even call her feeble position on the new green earth “standing.”

She’d found Madi, and a few other Nightbloods, once she’d learned it was safe to leave the island bunker. She’d been comforted to have people around and have someone to speak with that wasn’t herself and a one-way radio. Still, Madi was just a child, and most of the Nightbloods no older. They weren’t strangers to pain, but they didn’t know Clarke’s pain—Clarke’s burdens and the heaviness that turned her marrow to lead with each impossible choice she’d made. They didn’t know like her friends knew, like Raven, Monty, Harper, Murphy, Emori, and Octavia knew—like Bellamy knew.

Even with the Nightbloods, Clarke was still in a world of silence, and she felt even guiltier for finding the smallest bit of comfort in their company.

Survivor’s guilt.

Clarke hated it.

All she had left was the day-to-day grind of just being on the ground, attempts at making life easier for Madi and the younger Nightbloods than it had been for her, and her memories. Clarke thought a lot about those memories, the good and the bad. On somedays she thought more about the good ones, but on others…

Today was a bad day and as Clarke tasted salt on her tongue from the wet tears sliding down her face, she kept thinking about all the choices she’d made.

She kept following the numbers, because Clarke found they were decidedly safer when making a decision. When Clarke made them herself, people died when they didn’t need to. The numbers were a god of chances and risk, and whenever it told her something was too risky, she chose the other option—the “only choice.” The only choice, like making a list of one hundred people based on genetic survivability, specialized knowledge, and reproduction fitness. The only choice, like shutting the bunker that could hold thousands in on her small hundreds of people and leaving the rest outside for the deathwave. The only choice, like pointing a gun at her best friend’s head when he tried to open that bunker. The only choice, like climbing that radio tower to upload power to the Ring but failing anyway.

The number god was cruel. Even the only choice didn’t have enough chance after all. For all Clarke knew, she never got power to the Ring.

For all Clarke knew, her friends were dead.

Bellamy was dead.

So, Clarke wiped her face dry, got up, and started the craggy descent downwards to retrieve the radio she’d thrown. She’d need it, because talking to a dead Bellamy about what she was doing now was better than thinking about a live Bellamy and what she’d done then.

Clarke got up because it was the only choice.

* * *

Bellamy was staring out a window of the Ring, looking down at an irradiated earth. It wasn’t as angry and red as it had been the day of Praimfaya when he’d looked down in this same spot, holding an empty Baton, an empty bottle of bourbon, feeling quite hollow himself. Now, earth was starting to calm. There was a single spot of green that he could see, but most everything else was a wasteland.

Bellamy stared at the green, hoping she was there, and hoping she’d lived. She’d gotten power to the Ring like she’d said she would, but did she survive?

Part of him said yes, the part that hooked into his heart and pulled it into his ribs until it hurt. That part told him Clarke Griffin was capable of anything, that Clarke Griffin was a storm more alive than any nuclear power meltdown. The deathwave couldn’t extinguish her. She’d outlast it, because if anything was certain about Clarke it was her stubbornness.

The other part of him said no. It told him that storm and stubborn or not, Clarke was still just human. Her Nightblood wouldn’t save her from the deathwave, and she didn’t make it to safety.

It told him he’d left her.

It told him she’d died.

It told him he’d lived.

Bellamy and his friends had mastered the Ring within the first few months. Raven and Monty had tackled the first problems, teaching everyone else along the way. Eventually, their algae had bloomed. The CO2 scrubbers worked without any hitch too big for them to fix. The ship held. The power was steady. They were alive, and while every day on the ground had been a fight, up in the Ring there wasn’t much of one.

The only thing left to kill Bellamy was the survivor’s guilt.

Bellamy had said that if Clarke had died, he wouldn’t let her die in vain. He’d promised to do everything he could, and Raven had promised with him. They’d kept their word for three years. They were still trying to make good on that five-year plan to get back to the ground.

Bellamy was still trying to make good on meeting Clarke again.

“Bellamy!” Raven called, swinging into the room by holding onto the doorway. He turned from the window, alarmed until he saw the grin on her face he’d missed so much. It was her grin of triumph, and her way of letting the world—or, at least the people who now created her world—that Raven Reyes had bested the number god of chance. Finally, she said, “It’s working. All we have to do is wait.”

Bellamy felt cold apprehension spread through his chest until his palms began to sweat. He was afraid of hoping, but it was impossible not to. He was still breathing, after all.

“I’ll take first watch,” he said, following her out.

Bellamy could still hear Raven’s grin, even if he couldn’t see it. “Knew you’d say that. I’ll have Monty switch with you when he brings you dinner. Murphy says he has a new algae recipe he’s trying out.”

“It’s algae. How many different ways can you make it?”

Raven gave a short, loud laugh. “How many different ways has life tried to kill that cockroach?”

Bellamy shrugged a shoulder. “At least as many ways he’s tried to make algae.”

The radio room was silent, but as he rounded the table Raven had rigged up he saw the power light was on. Bellamy sat down on the stool and hardly heard Raven say the radio only worked one way; they couldn't find enough parts to use as a transmitter that they weren’t already using for something else vital to survival. He’d hardly heard her leave. She’d been scrounging enough parts to build a radio as soon as they were all certain the rest of the Ring was in stabilized order, yet it had still taken her the better part of three years to make it.

The Ring wasn’t always in stabilized order. While Raven and Monty may have tried to teach everyone else as much as they knew, there was still only one Raven and one Monty.

The hours passed and Bellamy sat, listening and waiting and hoping in his heart against what guilt his head told him was the reality. Eventually, he guessed he’d fallen asleep. Monty never came to wake him or switch watches, but that didn’t mean another voice didn’t try.

_"Bellamy, I hope you made it.”_

Bellamy rolled his head from the back of his hand onto the cold metal table. It woke him only a little, yet not as much as the next thing the voice said.

 _"Bellamy, I hope you_ all _made it.”_

He opened his eyes and stared. The radio static met him like an old friend, and it was the pounding of his own heart that answered her—answered Clarke.

_"I need you all to have made it.”_

**Author's Note:**

> ...to be continued until a later date, where more angst will continue until a (possible) reunion.
> 
> Hope you liked it, and please feel free to comment! It's been a while since I've tried my hand at Clarke and Bellamy, so feedback is always welcome :)


End file.
